2013-14 NHL Season: "We Are North American Scum"

[OMMF]

Again, I don't get all the Seattle love. There's already a well established hockey team 90 minutes up the road and even though they're Canadian, I highly doubt the ultra-liberal sports fans in the Emerald City care enough to support a local team. On top of that, they couldn't get the finances in order to keep the Sonics, so it makes me highly cynical they could do the same for a sport that isn't an automatic for Cascadia in the first place.

Portland, on the other hand, would make more sense. They only have one major market team, already have an NHL caliber arena set up with a recent WHL team who just won a championship. They're also more geographically separated, which makes me believe locals would be more inclined to become to this team since the competition is a further drive away.

Google shows it to be a 2.5 hour drive (not including border crossing time) between Vancouver and Seattle... not exactly a drive that someone in either city is going to make on a Wednesday night in either direction. It doesn't really matter that there is a team in Vancouver. If anything, you may draw some excess Canucks fans to your games on weekends... they are selling out every game, so there is unmet demand there. Portland is three hours away from Seattle. For hockey purposes, I think all three cities can be considered independent of one another. The problem with Portland is that its "only major market team" plays basketball, and basketball has almost the exact same season as hockey.

If that region of the country was more establish in terms of a hockey culture, I'd agree that Portland, Seattle and Vancouver could be separate, but I doubt that's the case. I'd be curious to see a local chip in and give a more accurate portrayal of what the base is like there, if there's much interest in terms of bar culture and the youth level, or if it's more of a Seahawks central town, with the other teams just periphery players.

Anecdotally, the Canucks support goes up the further they get in playoffs. In 2011, when we were at Fox Sports Grill watching game 7 of the SCF, out of the 350-400 the place holds, there were probably only 6 Bruins fans.

In terms of how NHL teams rank in Seattle, I'd say Vancouver is #1 but San Jose is a very close #2, due to both proximity and the fact that one of their star players, Marleau, played his junior hockey with the Thunderbirds. There are certainly more Sharks jerseys in the TBirds crowd but that's necessarily indicative of the the region as a whole.

Overall, NHL is on the radar of the sports fan here but it is on the lower-end. Sports bars do advertise that they have Center Ice, there is a Canadian/hockey themed bar that gets very crowded in the playoffs, and you do see random NHL jerseys around town depending on the weekend. If an NHL team were to move here under current conditions, I'd say they would easily be the 4th most popular team behind the Seahawks, Sounders and Huskies football. Until the Mariners start producing again, any new NBA or NHL team that moved here would be able to take the spotlight off of them, even with the seasons not overlapping.

[Kevin W.]

..as the citizens of Seattle fill a massive stadium to watch men attempt to murder, or at least concuss, one another for three hours.

...well, :censored:. I don't know why I didn't think of that. In my defense, I was very tired from work.

[OMMF]

I believe in this topic we talked about TSN losing the rights to the NHL and how they might fill that void with CHL broadcasts. Well, that isn't going to happen.

CanadianHockeyLeague @CHLHockey

The #CHL is proud to announce a 12-year Multiplatform Rights Extension with @Sportsnet through the 2025-26 season

[Still MIGHTY]

So TSN has the World Juniors and...?

[monkeypower]

So TSN has the World Juniors and...?

Hockey-wise, regional broadcasts of the Leafs, Jets and IIRC, the Senators.

Other sports-wise, I believe TSN has more, but it's nowhere near the NHL deal. They just made a deal with ESPN (I think) to broadcast more MLB games. The Blue Jays are Sportsnet but TSN used to pick up the late Sunday game and late night games when they needed to fill time (That's how I've seen a lot of Angels home games in the past few years).

[charger77]

Tavares is out for the season with a knee injury.

[cmm]

Fantastic.

[SuperLeafsFan]

Man, that injury to Tavares sucks. I was hoping that the Islanders were going to get Ryan Miller or a different goalie and make a playoff run. Now, the team can go down in the sewers and pick up a good prospect. Either way, this kinda helps the Isles.

[Cosmic]

Man, that injury to Tavares sucks. I was hoping that the Islanders were going to get Ryan Miller or a different goalie and make a playoff run. Now, the team can go down in the sewers and pick up a good prospect. Either way, this kinda helps the Isles.

It's going to be interesting to see what the Islanders do with the draft. They have to give Buffalo their first round pick either this year or next. They would pick no worse than sixth if the draft were held today, and they got that record with Tavares playing. So do they give up a high pick this year, or hope they get better but give up a pick in a (reportedly) much deeper draft next year?

[sportstar1212]

Man, that injury to Tavares sucks. I was hoping that the Islanders were going to get Ryan Miller or a different goalie and make a playoff run. Now, the team can go down in the sewers and pick up a good prospect. Either way, this kinda helps the Isles.

It's going to be interesting to see what the Islanders do with the draft. They have to give Buffalo their first round pick either this year or next. They would pick no worse than sixth if the draft were held today, and they got that record with Tavares playing. So do they give up a high pick this year, or hope they get better but give up a pick in a (reportedly) much deeper draft next year?

I figure Buffalo would prefer to get the Isles first round pick next year so they can have another ticket in the McDavid sweepstakes.

[Cosmic]

Man, that injury to Tavares sucks. I was hoping that the Islanders were going to get Ryan Miller or a different goalie and make a playoff run. Now, the team can go down in the sewers and pick up a good prospect. Either way, this kinda helps the Isles.

It's going to be interesting to see what the Islanders do with the draft. They have to give Buffalo their first round pick either this year or next. They would pick no worse than sixth if the draft were held today, and they got that record with Tavares playing. So do they give up a high pick this year, or hope they get better but give up a pick in a (reportedly) much deeper draft next year?

I figure Buffalo would prefer to get the Isles first round pick next year so they can have another ticket in the McDavid sweepstakes.

Good point. I forgot that every team that misses the playoffs next year will have a shot for McDavid. Isles may give up a top 5 pick just so they don't give up a pick that could become McDavid. Either way is fine by me; the Sabres will probably be bad enough again next year to earn it the "honest" way. Now that the Oilers found a goalie, my Sabres-Oilers comparisons aren't nearly as fun...

[NEW.ERA]

I don't care what team you are. You'd have to be downright idiotic to give up a first round pick next year.

[waltere]

Bear in mind this is the organisation which offered the Blue Jackets every single draft pick they had in exchange for Ryan Murray

[ElwoodCuse]

I guess they will want to protect the South Koreans from getting pummeled every game.

The host country no longer gets an automatic bid into the hockey tournament. They learned their lesson with Italy.

It's a shame though, I wanted to see Jimmy Paek go up against Jaromir Jagr.

[Cosmic]

I guess they will want to protect the South Koreans from getting pummeled every game.

The host country no longer gets an automatic bid into the hockey tournament. They learned their lesson with Italy.

It's a shame though, I wanted to see Jimmy Paek go up against Jaromir Jagr.

I don't think Italy did much worse than some of the low-ranked teams in the tournament do every year. I tried to see how Japan did in 1998, and that led me to some places that I had no idea had national hockey teams... India, Kuwait (the Japanese beat them 44-1 in 1999), Hong Kong, Macau, etc.

[BigBubba]

Zetterberg likely out for the year, according to Babcock.

[Coast2CoastAM2006]

I guess they will want to protect the South Koreans from getting pummeled every game.

The host country no longer gets an automatic bid into the hockey tournament. They learned their lesson with Italy.

It's a shame though, I wanted to see Jimmy Paek go up against Jaromir Jagr.

I don't think Italy did much worse than some of the low-ranked teams in the tournament do every year. I tried to see how Japan did in 1998, and that led me to some places that I had no idea had national hockey teams... India, Kuwait (the Japanese beat them 44-1 in 1999), Hong Kong, Macau, etc.

the hell you score 44 goals in one game? I can't even do that when I set my nhl game to easy and add the worst rated players in the game.

[BigBubba]

I guess they will want to protect the South Koreans from getting pummeled every game.

The host country no longer gets an automatic bid into the hockey tournament. They learned their lesson with Italy.

It's a shame though, I wanted to see Jimmy Paek go up against Jaromir Jagr.

I don't think Italy did much worse than some of the low-ranked teams in the tournament do every year. I tried to see how Japan did in 1998, and that led me to some places that I had no idea had national hockey teams... India, Kuwait (the Japanese beat them 44-1 in 1999), Hong Kong, Macau, etc.

the hell you score 44 goals in one game? I can't even do that when I set my nhl game to easy and add the worst rated players in the game.

I know goal differential matters, but jeez, you couldn't let up at all?

[Cosmic]

I guess they will want to protect the South Koreans from getting pummeled every game.

The host country no longer gets an automatic bid into the hockey tournament. They learned their lesson with Italy.

It's a shame though, I wanted to see Jimmy Paek go up against Jaromir Jagr.

I don't think Italy did much worse than some of the low-ranked teams in the tournament do every year. I tried to see how Japan did in 1998, and that led me to some places that I had no idea had national hockey teams... India, Kuwait (the Japanese beat them 44-1 in 1999), Hong Kong, Macau, etc.

the hell you score 44 goals in one game? I can't even do that when I set my nhl game to easy and add the worst rated players in the game.

I know goal differential matters, but jeez, you couldn't let up at all?

If you search on Wikipedia for any country's national team, it lists their biggest victories and biggest defeats on the side. You can surf around that way to find some really random teams/scores. Australia beat New Zealand 58-0 in 1987. One day later, that New Zealand team beat Hong Kong 19-0.

[HedleyLamarr]

I wonder how sloppy this first week of hockey is going to be.

The star players' body clocks are going to have two days or so to adjust from being 9+ hours ahead. The rest of the squads are going to have nearly three weeks of "game-playing shape" rust to shake off.